I have been shooting with the T2i but the FPS of 3.4 is driving me nuts. I will keep the T2i body for Lifestyle shots but for Wakeboarding I want a few more frames a second. The 7D is 8fps and the 1D is 10. Other then the money factor what camera would you purchase. Is the 1D that much more complicated then the 7D?

I agree I was shooting next to Rod the other day on the delta and he is firing away and i am just Click.........click....click he is click click click click I miss the grab he gets it kind of sucked. I know there is a big difference in price but I don't want to regret getting less camera 2 months down the road.

Damn Ben!!! You jumped into this hobby with both feet. I'm pretty happy with my 7D and 81/2 fps on "spray and pray" seems plenty for me. If money was no consideration I guess I would go with the Mark IV, but I don't know if it's $3,500 better then the 7. Just a 7D shooters bias opion

I have a Mark IV and love it but unless you just want the best at any cost the 7D is hard to beat. Lot's of guy (like Randy S) use and get awesome results. I see lots of guys shooting fashion with it also. You could buy a 5D Mark II for landscape and portraits, a 7D for sports/wildlife, a 50 f1.4 and still have some cash left over. Don't get me wrong- the 1D M4 kicks total ass but it isn't 3X better than the 7D. Image quality and high ISO (up to 12,800) is pretty amazing with the 1D M4.

After shooting a 1D for 2 years and a 1D3 for almost 3 more (mixed in with a 10D, 20D and 5D) I just kind of got spoiled by 1 series ergonomics and I love the balance of a 1.3 crop vs either fullframe or 1.6X sensors.

As far as complicated goes the 7D lacks many of the custom functions (mostly AF) 1 series bodies have as well as other specific functions which, unless you take the time to learn, may make things worse rather then better (there are really no "auto" modes on them either).

The MKIV puts out a cleaner file and is way more exposure tolerant at high ISOs but if you're not into heavy duty post processing and pixel peeping it's probably not something you'll notice.

Nothing above is a real reason for you not to get the 7D as it will do everything you need as far as shooting wakeboarding goes and it's going to feel like an unbelievable upgrade over any Rebel.

The bottom line is if you don't already know why you need a MKIV you really don't. I'd get the 7D and if you want/need a MKIV later they are only going to go down in price.

One thing I don't really like about the 1D M4- I find it much harder to quickly select manual AF points. For instance, let's say I am shooting a model and want to manually set the focal point every shot and put it on the eyes. Even if I set the custom function on the camera to limit the selectable points to 9, 11 or 19 (versus the default of 45) you have to use the joy stick to select the focal point versus just using the dial to manually rotate through all available points like on a 5D or 50D. I am much quicker on the 5D M2 and use that now for portrait work. I was getting uncomfortable with the time delay as I stumbled to quickly select the focal point.

One other point, you can put a 1.4X Extender on a 1D M4 and get 1.7X crop feel whereas you can't make a 7D any wider for landscape work. But, you can use an Tokina 11X16 on a 7D which is an absolutely excellent ultra wide angle lens in my book (and it also works on a 1D M4).